Defer Delivery of Sent Items Email for Microsoft Outlook

A few days ago I explained How-To Defer the Delivery of sent items/emails using GMAIL. This deferral process is particularly handy for those “OH NO I HIT SEND” moments where you wish you could take back an email almost the same instant you sent it. Personally, I’ll never forget an early period in my career when a VP of HR insisted I open my manager’s inbox and delete an email she had sent him by accident. I wish she had read a tip like this one before she sent that email seeing that her email almost ended my career.

Anyway, after I wrote the How-To for GMAIL, I almost instantly looked to see if I could defer/delay the delivery of emails using Outlook…??? Guess what; YOU CAN! The feature is available for both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. Very groovy indeed. Being that it only took me 15 seconds to find the Outlook Rule I guess I’m a bit late to the party (sorry groovyReaders!) Either way, read on for the 15-second tip! You never know, this How-To might just save YOUR job (or perhaps your IT guy’s job.) ;)

How-To Defer Delivery of Sent Items/Email using Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007

1. OpenOutlook, ClickTools, Rules and Alerts

2. ClickNew Rule

3.ClickCheck Message after sending, Next

4.ClickNext again

5. ClickYes

6. Check Box defer delivery by a number of minutes, then Clicka number of to configure the number of minutes of delivery deferral time

7. Enternumber of MINUTES you wish to defer the delivery of Sent email; Click OK when done

Note: Deferral time is MINUTES, not seconds. Personally, 3 minutes is plenty for me.

8.Click Finish to save rule

9. ClickOK when told about client-only rule

Because we clicked Finish early, you didn’t get to name the rule. To correct that just Click the New Rule and give it a new name as shown in Step 10. Name it something like, SAVE MY JOB DELAY. ;)

10.Click the rule you just created, ClickChange Rule, Rename Rule

Wow, ten steps for a 15-second tip! Questions? Comments? Stories? Would love to hear from you!

12 Comments

12 Comments

Alexmvp

Awesome tip. Just enabled a 5 minute delay for all emails sent to people at work and all emails marked urgent (high importance). Thanks again!

I have the same send-first-think-later problem sometimes – I ended up hunting round for an app which could intercept outgoing emails to give me a chance to review (also useful as I have about five outgoing email accounts, and sometimes I send via the wrong one the first time).

I ended up finding an app called SoftX Email Monitor – it’s designed to watch for any and all outgoing emails (to flag up spammy applications, etc), but a side effect of this is that whenever you send an email in Outlook (without whitelisting the application) it will show the email. It’s one more click to send the email (otherwise it blocks it) but it’s saved me quite a few times now! If you hit Block Send, the Send/Receive times out in Outlook and you can just open the email up, modify it / change the outgoing account etc, and then send/receive again.

It’s freeware, and works like a charm. A useful alternative to setting up a rule if you want more detailed control on a per-email basis. You can get the app from http://www.softx.org/e-monitor.html :)

In older versions of Outlook, you didn’t need a rule; subsequently, you could force a send of the email before the alloted time. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do that with this solution. Also, Outlook will not warn you that you have a message waiting to be sent when you close the application. At least mine didn’t. I have Office Professional Plus 2010 if that makes any difference.

I’m baffled about why Microsoft would take send/receive options out of Outlook.

1. In Outlook 2007/2010, what is the differece between setting a delay period using rules (like you explained here) and setting it using tools-options and setting send/receive to, lets say, every 2 minutes? I guess that means you sometimes click “send” and it goes right off. The question is – if (at least in 2007) I use the rules options, and set it for, e.g., 5 minutes – can I force sending earlier by clicking “send/receive”?
2. The default time for defering a single mail is the same day at 5 pm. Can this default be changed, so it will be, for example, the next day at 8am?
Thanks,
A.